PiParted - Custom GParted Live CD for Pi (Version 0.04)

[SirLagz]

Not sure if this is the best place to put it, but here goes !

I've customised a GParted LiveCD Iso to automatically run a script that will -
1. Grab the list of Distros from the RPI Download page
2. Let the user select which distro he wants to install
3. Select the Disk device that he wants to install it onto
4. dd the image onto the disk device.

Now this is in it's very infant stages, but I'm looking for some testers just to see if what I have works so far, as I don't have the ability to test it out at the moment.
The LiveCD will need at least 4 gigs of ram to run properly so that it can uncompress the image files.

Any takers ?
Some more info at my blog - http://sirlagz.net/2013/04/02/896/

[pluggy]

Tried it, it downloaded the raspdian image and extracted it ok. then offered my main HDD as the only available sd card to write it to. Unsurprisingly I declined.... Ubuntu 12.04 finds my card/reader OK.

[SirLagz]

darn, guess I'll need to mess around with the kernel a bit !
Can you please post a lsusb from both PiParted and Ubuntu ?
Thanks !

[Joe Schmoe]

4 G RAM???

Well, it is still April 1 (at least here in the US).

[tonyhughes]

4 G RAM???

Well, it is still April 1 (at least here in the US).

If it's a live CD, and you don't have access to the filesystem (because it is a CD), and dont want to mess with the hard drives (because it might be windows or something you just dont want touched), then doing it all in RAM is a great idea. 4GB for downloading and uncompressing a 1.9GB image sounds normal to me.

Great idea!

[SirLagz]

4 G RAM???

Well, it is still April 1 (at least here in the US).

Didn't even occur to me that it was April 1st lol.

Well, it actually needs around 2.8 gigs of ram...but who has 2.8 gigs of ram ? lol
2 gig is just to store the image in tmpfs pretty much.
other 1 gig is to run the livecd etc etc.

[pluggy]

darn, guess I'll need to mess around with the kernel a bit !
Can you please post a lsusb from both PiParted and Ubuntu ?
Thanks !

Heres the Ubuntu 12.04 one

Code: Select all

sv@sv-desktop:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 058f:6364 Alcor Micro Corp. Hi-Speed 7-in-1 Flash Card Reader/Writer [Sabrent]
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 045e:0768 Microsoft Corp. Sidewinder X4
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0458:002e KYE Systems Corp. (Mouse Systems) 
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 04e8:689e Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd GT-S5670 [Galaxy Fit]
sv@sv-desktop:~$ 

The last one isn't usually there, I'm charging my Phone.....

The Piparted may take a little longer

[pluggy]

The Piparted is the same, the Alcor 7in1 card reader is still there, it just doesn't see the SD card in it. On Ubuntu the SD card is /dev/sdb . The Piparted only sees /dev/sda . My machine has 6GB of RAM if thats relevent.

[SirLagz]

When you plug in the SD card, does anything new come up in the syslog ?

[pluggy]

You mean you want me to boot Piparted again ?

Shudder......

[pluggy]

I dunno what the Pi's most famous cat is like, but this one has a fixation with CD/DVDs and and the associated drives. If its within earshot and hears my CD drive run up, its jumps on the desk and sits on my keyboard...



Something of a trick question, Piparted doesn't have a syslog, dmesg doesn't change if I plug an SD card into the slot with Piparted. Unsurprisingly it does in Ubuntu.

[SirLagz]

Lol...thanks for That
Ill have to look into it further

[SirLagz]

The Piparted is the same, the Alcor 7in1 card reader is still there, it just doesn't see the SD card in it. On Ubuntu the SD card is /dev/sdb . The Piparted only sees /dev/sda . My machine has 6GB of RAM if thats relevent.

You wouldn't happen to know which driver that card reader uses would you ?

[pluggy]

Relevant bit from dmesg on my Ubuntu :

Code: Select all

[    1.926552] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[    1.926786] scsi2 : usb-storage 1-5:1.0
[    1.926945] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[    1.926950] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[    2.216052] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[    2.680055] usb 5-1: new low-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[    2.925313] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic- SD/MMC           1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[    2.925944] scsi 2:0:0:1: Direct-Access     Generic- Compact Flash    1.01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[    2.926551] scsi 2:0:0:2: Direct-Access     Generic- SM/xD-Picture    1.02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[    2.927306] scsi 2:0:0:3: Direct-Access     Generic- MS/MS-Pro        1.03 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[    2.928909] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[    2.929323] sd 2:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[    2.930049] sd 2:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[    2.930769] sd 2:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
[    2.933422] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    2.935666] sd 2:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    2.936418] sd 2:0:0:2: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    2.937913] sd 2:0:0:3: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk

[SirLagz]

Sounds like it is picking up the reader then, just not the SD card.

Can you put the SD card in, and then plug the SD card reader in at all ?

-- Also an update on this
I'm making an option so that you can copy the zip file onto the SD card first, and then the distro will then use that zip file to flash the distro. this will be useful for those who have no internet connection when they boot PiParted.

[SirLagz]

Version 0.02 released. Blog post with more details @ http://sirlagz.net/2013/04/08/piparted-v0-02/

Overview

Script now has 3 functions
1. Download from official mirror and flash
2. Get image from zip file on SD Card and flash - This assumes that your card is new card, i.e. one vfat partition, and also assumes there's only one zip file on the SD Card
3. Format SD Card back to default (one vfat partition that takes up entire card)

[duberry]

Well, it actually needs around 2.8 gigs of ram...but who has 2.8 gigs of ram ? lol
2 gig is just to store the image in tmpfs pretty much.
other 1 gig is to run the livecd etc etc.

i just dd a few img to SD ... ( the latest piCore-X > 512mb sd and wheezy-raspbian > 2gb sd )

using

Code: Select all

 gunzip < $IMAGE | dd of=$DEVICE bs=1M 

i did not have to extract the '.img' from archive . this worked with zip and gzip eg $IMAGE ="file.img.gz" or ="file.img.zip"
it did not use lots of ram !!!!!

maby this method can save some time / ram ?
eg only copy file.img.zip into ram then use above code after seting $IMAGE and $DEVICE as needed

*CODE shamelesly cut/moded from

tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/README.txt

[ghans]

I think you could use this directly with the output
from wget or curl , too !

ghans

[SirLagz]

Well, it actually needs around 2.8 gigs of ram...but who has 2.8 gigs of ram ? lol
2 gig is just to store the image in tmpfs pretty much.
other 1 gig is to run the livecd etc etc.

i just dd a few img to SD ... ( the latest piCore-X > 512mb sd and wheezy-raspbian > 2gb sd )

using

Code: Select all

 gunzip < $IMAGE | dd of=$DEVICE bs=1M 

i did not have to extract the '.img' from archive . this worked with zip and gzip eg $IMAGE ="file.img.gz" or ="file.img.zip"
it did not use lots of ram !!!!!

maby this method can save some time / ram ?
eg only copy file.img.zip into ram then use above code after seting $IMAGE and $DEVICE as needed

*CODE shamelesly cut/moded from

tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/README.txt

Ah Nice.
Will have to try that on my low-ram laptop and verify

Thanks for that !

Also, if anyone would be kind enough to try and wipe their SD card using the 'Reset SD Card' option, and then make sure it works in windows, that would be brilliant !

[SirLagz]

using

Code: Select all

 gunzip < $IMAGE | dd of=$DEVICE bs=1M 

i did not have to extract the '.img' from archive . this worked with zip and gzip eg $IMAGE ="file.img.gz" or ="file.img.zip"
it did not use lots of ram !!!!!

maby this method can save some time / ram ?
eg only copy file.img.zip into ram then use above code after seting $IMAGE and $DEVICE as needed

*CODE shamelesly cut/moded from

tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/README.txt

Well, it looks like it works with PiParted
Time to modify everything to use that now, and now it also needs less ram !

Thanks a lot !

[SirLagz]

Just released version 0.03
Updated it to use the above code so now it doesn't need 4 gigs of ram anymore.
Blog post - http://sirlagz.net/2013/04/19/piparted-v0-03/

[duberry]

I think you could use this directly with the output
from wget or curl , too !

ghans

i guess the potential advantage of this is that it would work on systems with less (1.5<) ram , like the pi?
disadvantages
afak using curl & pipe & dd you are not able to Checksum the image ? as it is writen 'on the fly' ..

@SirLagz (lol gd name!) glad it was usefull also i now have enough ram to give it a try ( just no cdrom .. but think i can work round that )

[remsnet]

4 G RAM???

Well, it is still April 1 (at least here in the US).

My ANTI-PI-(A)Parted (c) !! has used only 64MB ram , runs debian Live CD with parted on VMbox and on my PC .

LOL

[pluggy]

Sorry SirLagz, version 0.03 doesn't find my sd card reader either. I didn't let it format my main hard drive "back to normal" .

Its not easy plugging the reader in when the card is in the slot, Whilst it is a USB device (almost all card readers are) its internally connected to the motheroard's USB. Open heart surgery I'm not in the mood for.....

[Jim Manley]

I dunno what the Pi's most famous cat is like, but this one has a fixation with CD/DVDs and and the associated drives. If its within earshot and hears my CD drive run up, its jumps on the desk and sits on my keyboard.

If you listen carefully to the drive or touch just your fingernails on or in proximity to the drive, you'll feel the subharmonics on which the puss ... um, cat is placing its ... um, sensitive parts - those low-frequency oscillations are the disk being spun faster/slower depending on how far in/out the read/write head is relative to the center/edge of the disk. Think of a word that rhymes with "Pibrator" - hey, I'm trademarking that one!